Big tides show sea level rise

KING TIDE: Watch out for king tides over the weekend, which may affect some Auckland roads including Tamaki Drive

Aucklanders are being asked to photograph particularly high tides they see over the coming days.

NIWA is predicting a king tide to hit between February 1 and 4 and the Auckland Council is encouraging residents to take and share pictures as part of a community project aimed at raising awareness of rising sea levels.

A 2011 storm surge occurred on a red-alert tide day in Auckland, flooding houses and roads and exceeding the previous highest storm tide in 1936 by 14 centimetres.

Council coastal specialist Scott Speed says similar projects are operating in California and parts of Australia and are a fun way of demonstrating what a "normal" tide might look like in the future with projected sea level rise.

"These tides give people an opportunity to be coastal time travellers and give them a glimpse of the future."

The longer term goal of the initiative is to target one or two king tide events per year, and expand the project to other regions.

People can photograph the coast during king tides and upload their images to auckland.kingtides.org.nz, or use instagram/kingtidesakl on the Instagram smartphone app.